Sat 12 Nov 2005
Sat 12 Nov 2005
Sat 12 Nov 2005
Sat 12 Nov 2005
Sat 12 Nov 2005
“He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”
Drawing upon European existentialist philosophy, and Freud’s psychoanalytic methodology Victor Frankl developed a unique form of existential analysis, which he termed Logotherapy. Having experienced the horror of the Nazi concentration camps, Frankl became intensely aware of the need of man to have transcendental meaning in life in order to provide for him the hope necessary to garner a will to live amidst great suffering.
Sat 12 Nov 2005
Swiss existentialism also begins with a humanistic and rationalistic framework. The mechanism of authentication, however, differs from the German and French existentialists. Karl Jaspers proposes that authentication comes from what he refers to as a “first order experience”. Again the framework is the same only the content varies.
“Most people do not know the work of Karl Jaspers in Switzerland, as well as that of the French or German; but, he is an exceedingly important man. He is German, but now teaches at the University of Basil. He lays a great deal of emphasis on the need to wait for a non-rational ‘final experience’, which would give meaning to life. People who follow Jaspers have come to me and said: ‘I have had a final experience’. They never expect me to ask them what it was. The simple fact is that if I ask such a thing, it would prove that I was among the uninitiated. The fact that it is an existential experience means that it cannot be communicated. It is not possible to communicate content with regard to the experience which they have had…” (Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, IVP, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1968, page 23)
We must be careful not to discount the validity of experience itself, for it is our accumulated experience that allows us the opportunity to interface with reality. But, we are not the mere sum of our experiences any more than the sum of our experiences is the measure of reality. Our soul, who we are, our identity, interfaces with reality; by this I mean true truth. And so our experience then, provides a mechanism, from which to understand this reality.
The criteria then for the authenticity of our experience is, whether or not it conforms to true reality, which stands on its own independent of our experience.
Sat 12 Nov 2005
Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre are regarded as the main proponents of French existentialism. They also began from the same humanistic, rationalistic framework, as their German counterpart Heidegger.
1. To begin with, it is impossible on a personal or individual level for any man to live consistently with the implications of this philosophy throughout his life. That is they can only be consistent with the implications of their existential position in selected areas of their life.
Sat 12 Nov 2005
“On April 23, 1923, the combined faculties elected Heidegger Rector of the University of Freiberg. Three months earlier, Adolph Hitler had been appointed Chancellor of the Weimar Republic; the Nazi Party was rapidly consolidating its position in the government. Weary of the political divisiveness and general demoralization that plagued post-war Germany, many German academics (Heidegger among them) supported the Nazi Party’s call for German resurgence. On May third and fourth local Freiberg newspapers announced the new Rector’s ‘official entrance’ into the NSDAP. Suddenly, words like ‘kampf’ ‘military service’, and the destiny of the ‘German Volk’, appeared alongside ‘science’ and ‘Being’ in Heidegger’s addresses. On the eve of the Reistag’s elections of November 12, Heidegger spoke out in support of Hitlerian policies that had culminated in Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations (whose birth certificate was the deeply resented Versailles Treaty).
Sat 12 Nov 2005
Though theoretically, man can hold unswervingly to this atheistic philosophy, when one is confronted with the natural implications of such, it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to consistently live this philosophy. The vast majority of existentialists therefore, live in a dichotomy; they think in evolutionary terms and except for selected areas live largely, under a system of implied absolutes in most areas of morals and truth.
The most ardent proponents of existentialism, when holding their newborn babies in hand for the first time, find it difficult to look upon their child as mere protoplasm. It is contradictory to “who we are”, to see humanity as a valueless, meaningless conglomerate of tissue that has, through the medium of chance in time evolved into a very sophisticated accidental biological machine. Those who accept this naturalistic presupposition can make no distinction between the value of a human life and the value of inanimate matter. That is, if they understand it properly.
David Brown, former executive director of the Sierra club, at least in theory, is closer to being consistent with his underlying presupposition, when he sees no difference in the value of a mountain and the value of a human being:
“While the death of young men is unfortunate, it is no more serious than the touching of mountains and wilderness areas by humankind.” (Sited in, B. Asmus’ Building an Unlimited Future, Imprimis, January 1992)
A more precise statement of this philosophy has not been stated since Ingrid Newkirk’s famous quote: “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” Newkirk was the president for the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals. This was quoted from Reader’s Digest in June 1990, in the article, The Animal Rights War on Medicine. It is perfectly logical, then, for the animal rights terrorists to poison foods intended for human consumption in protest of our use of rat poison. This is not to say that anyone should condone the abuse of any animals nor of the inanimate world that has been charged into our care. But, most of us are repulsed by the thought that human life is as valuable as that of a rat. Ironically, I find it ludicrous and vehemently illogical to protest the slaughter of animals such as the baby seal, while condoning the wholesale slaughter of unborn human beings through abortion. Yet, most of the liberals that are opposing the fur industry and the like are proponents of the abortion of human beings. How does that make sense?
Sat 12 Nov 2005
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